III. THE CONCESSIONS OF EVOLUTIONISTS. THE FORTY-EIGHTH LECTURE IN THE BOSTON MONDAY LECTURESHIP, DELIVERED IN THE MEIONAON OCT. 16. "THE Convertibility of the physical forces, the correlation of these with the vital, and the intimacy of that nexus between mental and bodily activity, which, explain it as we may, cannot be denied, all lead upward towards one and the same conclusion, the source of all Power in Mind; and that philosophical conclusion is the apex of a pyramid, which has its foundation in the primitive instincts of humanity." -DR. W. B. CARPENTER, Mental Physiology, chap. xx. "CAUSATION is the Will, Creation the Act, of God."-W. R. GROVE, Essay on the Correlation of Physical Forces. III. THE CONCESSIONS OF EVOLUTIONISTS. THE small philosopher is a great character in New England. His fundamental rule of logical procedure is to guess at the half, and multiply by two. [Applause.] God be thanked for the diffusion of knowledge! God save us from the attendant temporary evils of arrogant sciolism in democratic ages! These are a necessary transitory stage in the progress of popular enlightenment which has just begun to dawn in this yet dim Western world. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and it is our boast, that, in America, every man has a little knowledge. We must drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; but every breathlessly hurried free citizen now is endeavoring, to his honor, to have a taste at least; and yet we know how mercilessly commerce and greed, and the toil for daily bread, wrench parched lips away from the deep draught. Full popular enlightenment is popular sanity; penumbral popular enlightenment is often popular insanity; and yet the penumbral must precede the full radiance. The small philosopher is always a great character under representative institutions. He seems destined to reign long on the earth, and often disastrously, and yet not forever. We are an atrociously independent, and as yet only a half-educated people. De Tocqueville said that individualism is the natural, and must often be a most mischievous, basis of democratic philosophy. To her great credit and to her great temporary mental distress, Massachusetts, in which popular enlightenment is more widely diffused than elsewhere, has probably just now more small philosophers than any other population of equal size on the globe. Emerson wrote of average Massachusetts as she was thirty years ago, "It is a whole population of ladies and gentlemen out in search of a religion." No doubt it is to our credit that we study the newspapers; but it is not to our credit that we do not better maintain the best ones, and that we do not sift newspaper information a little more warily, and that some of us think a man can be competently educated on the most trustworthy part of the daily press. "We must destroy the faith of the people in the penny newspaper," I once heard Carlyle say in his study at Chelsea. I fathomlessly respect able and conscientious newspapers; I revere their majestic mission in history. I used to be told in Europe that Americans are governed by newspapers; and I was accustomed to answer, "No, gentlemen, not by newspapers, but by news-a very different thing." But, whether the shrewdest readers get at the news that is the most strategic in science, in politics, in art, in theology, by a hasty scramble through the midnight scribble of our cheaper dailies, is rather doubt |